He is young, he is passionate. He talks about computers like an expert and has several researches under his name. He has represented his work in varied international conferences and has even been awarded as Best Researcher Award in one of the international conferences in 2015. He is also an honoured IEEE paper reviewer and Technical Program Committee Member. Not only this, he is dedicated to helping several upcoming researchers in the future and is going to be IEEE Co-Session Chairperson in 2017.

All this he achieved at a young age of 25!

He is Prathmesh Churi, fondly known as Patrick Sir by his hundreds of students who have been impressed by his energy and enthusiasm. He is currently teaching in a prestigious University NMIMS, Mumbai as an Assistant Professor. A team of CareerGuide.com had a brief chat with him to know more about his passion and ambitions. Also, since he is one of the youngest educationists in our country, we wanted to know about his views on career counseling. Mr Prathmesh Churi has always been interested in computers and subjects related to this field. He did his B.E. in Computer Science followed by M.E. in IT from Mumbai University. For two years, he taught in University of Mumbai itself as a lecturer and then after that, he started teaching in NMIMS.

Not all the students know about their right careers, they need to be guided

Talking about career and fulfilling one’s passion, he very enthusiastically says that every child should be given access to awareness to different career options. A child should be educated about possibilities in different streams instead of giving a picture of only engineering and medical fields. He recalls his own experience of entering into the teaching profession. He said that once he finished his graduation and post-graduation, he received job offers from various companies and one of them was in abroad with an extremely good salary package. He remembers how people around him were pushing him towards taking that job offer despite him being passionate about teaching. He says that he knew strongly that he wanted to opt for a career in research and teaching and he sincerely followed his instincts. But on a similar note, not all the students get to know about the career options that are fit for them and end up taking up a career which others advised them without considering their passion and skills.

Parents should be given counselling along with the students to let them know their kids’ skills

Being an academician, he interacts with several students on a daily basis and many come to him for their career problems. He accepts the fact that current situation about career guidance is so grave that even several PhD students are unaware of possible future outcomes of the field they are working in. This strongly demands a dedicated career counselling to all the students at an early age in their life. According to Mr Prathmesh Churi, there are three reasons for which career counselling is highly important for a student – (1) Many parents force their own aspiration on to their children and expect them to excel in the fields, they once wanted to go into (2) Students are not aware of different career options available to them (3) Parents as well as children themselves are not aware of their own skills which demands a collective counselling of the student and his parents.

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Students need to be given to choosing their career, instead of following traditional routes

Another concern for him was that most of the students are pressurised since the beginning of their career. They are taught that by the age of 23-24, they should become a graduate. This should be followed by a post-graduation and stable job. He believes that students should be given freedom from all these pressures. They should be taught that it is alright even to change a career once they realise their skills and talents. It is not compulsory to follow a particular route which has traditionally been considered to be perfect. He believes that many students get trapped in this journey of following a perfect career. Even after receiving the highest degrees, many students are not able to understand what kind of future they see for themselves in that career. This not only impacts the performance of the student in their chosen career but also decreases their confidence by a great factor.

“I try to help all the students through my networks with career counsellors in different industries”